Things to Know

The campaign is called Path of Rebellion . For now, at least. I'm calling my overall series of campaigns the Anaxes Series , and this will be the second entry. You may remember my project last year, the Siege of the Arkanis Sector . It was my first stab at making a homebrew campaign and it was both my top project for most of the year and also quite a steep learning curve. I've taken some of my best ideas and applied them to the newest "season," and I'll be rolling out this second campaign very soon.

It's a bigger galaxy. I took a step up from Arkanis Sector and made this campaign span the whole Star Wars galaxy. Aesthetically, it felt too crowded to jam the entire crowd of misfit faces from Armada into a single sector. This campaign will feature battles from Corellia to Tatooine, and all sorts of worlds in between. Everything in Armada, and perhaps a few custom cards, will find its way in.

Fleet building is more restricted. This sounds crazy, but hear me out. In the campaign, I have a large spreadsheet with ships (prebuilt with upgrades) and squadrons (prebuilt into small groups of 2-4 squadrons). Players pick from these units, but the key trick is that they're not allowed to edit them . In other words, you pick off of a menu rather than tailoring everything according to design.

• Thematic. I want to encourage rules that make the campaign feel like real warships, and less like collectible card combos. I consider both game effects and the role and history of the units in the game during the design process.
• Rebalancing. I'm realistic that some cards and some combos are just better than others. Prebuilt ships means that I can tweak the cost of a package if it's underpowered or overpowered.
• Tech tree. Early in the campaign, teams will have access to more basic units (staples of the faction, or ships typical of the early Rebellion era), and later in the campaign players will unlock more advanced options. '

A war on many fronts. Locations in Path of Rebellion belong to various fronts of the war, and when you fight over any given world, your successes will result in progress for your team across that front. Tatooine, Ryloth, Mandalore, and others represent one front: the Outer Rim with its harsh worlds and pirate raids. Mon Cala, Minntooine, Pammant, and others represent another front: the well-defended shipyards of the Mon Calamari people. In total, I have four fronts so far. I plan to consider the campaign in "1.0" state when these four are ready, but in the future I hope to expand on that and bring even more planets into the game.

Scarring and veterancy are back , first introduced in the Corellian Conflict . This time, it’s expanded upon in a more granular way, with levels of scarring instead of a binary scarred/unscarred. The most common way to take a scar is by being destroyed in battle, which adds +1 Scarring. But, some effects can add or reduce scarring. What matters is that each scar increases the cost of the unit by about 10%. As ships are battered in combat, it becomes more and more inefficient to keep fighting with them. Commanders will want to rotate their forces, seeking newer and stronger ships as older ones are taken down. With the right strategies, admirals can find opportunities to remove scarring, such as through claiming victory at planets that house the proper facilities. Veterancy, meanwhile, is also given levels instead of an on/off status. It works similarly to the Corellian Conflict , but I will be ready for a few more specifics soon.

Agenda cards interact with the rules. Most of the time, players will be holding three randomly drawn agenda cards during a battle, hoping (or strategizing) for the right conditions to transpire so that those agenda cards can be played in order to win more campaign points. Agenda cards resemble Objective cards from Rebellion. Both teams use these cards, but individualized for the faction. Most agenda cards give the player something to strive for in battle, aside from straight victory. For example, destroying a specific type of ship, or keeping your flagship alive. These cards are played at the conclusion of the battle, during the Scoring step. But, a few agenda cards are played at other timings, and may interrupt play in order to deliver an unusual effect, such as interacting with the agenda cards in your opponent's hand. Additionally, some agenda cards give a small boosted effect if played by the indicated commander. There will be a few of these that affect each commander for both factions, but the system is meant to be a touch more generous to "underpowered" commanders like Tagge, Mothma, Tarkin, and Iblis.

Example of Play

In this example, the Imperial team includes fleets commanded by Admiral Motti, Admiral Screed, and Grand Admiral Thrawn. The Rebel team includes fleets commanded by Admiral Raddus, Commander Sato, and General Dodonna. Each one has a fleet consisting of ship units and squadron units. The players running each fleet didn't customize or tailor their fleet composition. Instead, they chose from the list of available units, picking from the "Start" lists only for this first round. Once each fleet is complete, the teams are ready to begin.

In the Strategy Phase, each player draws three agenda cards from their team's deck. They cannot trade cards, but they can discuss. Then, the players should draw five locations from the deck of planets. For this example, they have drawn Fondor, Lothal, Hoth, Mon Cala, and Alderaan. Each of these planets is color-coded to the "front" of the war that it represents, and for each front there is a set of objectives. Players draw one objective from the shuffled deck of objective cards that are set aside for each front. For this example, the objectives are Advanced Gunnery (at Fondor), Station Assault (at Lothal), Dangerous Territory (at Hoth), Intel Sweep (at Mon Cala), and Sensor Sweep (at Alderaan).

The Empire assaults first, choosing for Admiral Screed to designate the first attack. This player chooses Lothal and its Station Assault objective. The Rebel team must then choose one of its players to act as defender in this battle, settling on Admiral Raddus. Screed and Raddus are now paired for a battle. The Rebels choose a location to assault from the remaining four planets, and then the Empire chooses a location to assault from the remaining three. After this, the two unselected locations are shuffled back into the deck, and unused objective cards are shuffled back into their decks.

All three battles are played out during the Battle Phase. At the end of the battle for Fondor, during the Scoring step, the battling players calculate Margin of Victory and each gain campaign points according to a system very close to the tournament scoring system used in Organized Play. For this battle, Raddus wins against Screed, and the Rebels gain 7 campaign points while the Empire gains 4. Both players can also play agenda cards from their hand of three. Screed plays two agenda cards--Thin the Ranks, and Sudden Strike--earning points because he destroyed many enemy squadrons during the battle, and because he destroyed an enemy ship before it had activated. Raddus has only one agenda card whose conditions he has met--Tracking Device--and he earns points because his enemy's flagship had at least one face-up damage card on it at the end of the battle. Finally, the winner of the battle, Raddus, gains one more effect as a reward, this one based on the battle's location, Fondor. Raddus may choose one Large-base ship from his team and reduce its scarring level by one.

Both teams add these campaign points to their team score for the Yellow front, representing their progress in the long series of raids and uprisings against the Empire's weapons factories and shipyards among the Core and Midrim worlds. The Rebels unlock some hard-hitting bomber groups and frigates, while the Empire gains a few examples of the Emperor's newest classes of Star Destroyer: the Kuat Refit and the Cymoon-1 Refit.

Unfortunately, lots of ships and squadrons were destroyed during the battle at Fondor. Each ship that was destroyed gains a level of scarring, which will make it more expensive in the future. Squadrons are scarred as a whole unit, which might include two, three, or four individual squadrons. Rules govern how much of a squadron unit must be destroyed in order for the whole unit to become scarred. Scarring will make it increasingly inefficient to keep fielding the same units over and over, unless they are carefully protected, and eventually units will no longer be worth fielding, as they are too costly to patch up. Thankfully, as Admiral Raddus learned, by winning the right battles, he can selectively unscar his most important ships, using Fondor's spacedocks to refit and repair one Large ship that needs the attention.

After all of the battles for the round have been resolved, and campaign points have been updated, each player rebuilds his or her fleet, using the newest costs and perhaps choosing some of the newly unlocked units. This phase of the campaign has few restrictions on it, so commanders may want to update their ships to the newest classes and swap in some higher tiers of units to replace their scarred forces. Unused agenda cards may be either discarded, or revealed to all players and then kept for next time. Then, the campaign continues with the next round.

Reserved

Reserved

Did someone say something about a new campaign? Yep, must have been talking about me!

Okay, the "Rebellion in the Rim" campaign is cool, for sure. Come Q3, I'll be into that for sure. In the meantime, though, work continues apace on Path of Rebellion.

The current update is... a feedback survey!

In this survey, I'm looking for a crowdsourced consensus on how freely to rebalance based on the actual power level of cards, correcting for some bad pricing by the earliest waves. But I'm also trying to pull back the curtain a little on what I'm working on, to see how it sits with people.

I am replying cause I don't know how else to subscribe to this thread Playing Arkanis soon, I hope, and this after (when it's out!)

22 minutes ago, Aerothorn said:

I am replying cause I don't know how else to subscribe to this thread Playing Arkanis soon, I hope, and this after (when it's out!)

You can just hit "Follow", under the "Reply" button.

Thanks! Will do that going forward